Why I Started SWAG — Smart Women Aging Gracefully

Let me tell you what grace does not mean.

It does not mean elegant. It does not mean composed. It does not mean sitting quietly with your hands folded while the world tells you that your best years are behind you.

Grace means unmerited favor. What if you no longer had to earn your worthiness? What if you just assumed it?

That is the idea behind SWAG. Smart Women Aging Gracefully. And the S, by the way, is whatever you need it to be today. Smart. Sexy. Sophisticated. Sassy. A total smartass. Your call. The grace is the non-negotiable part.

I started this community because I needed it myself.

I have been in rooms full of high-achieving women my whole career. And what I noticed, over and over, is that so many of us spend the first half of our lives proving that we belong in the room — and then, somewhere in our 50s and 60s, we start to wonder if we are still supposed to be doing that.

The answer is no.

At some point the weight of other people's opinions starts to become optional. Not all at once. Not dramatically. It is more like a gradual lightening. You start to notice that you have been carrying a version of yourself that no longer fits. That some of the rules you have been living by were never really yours to begin with.

I was 18 years old when I left home. I drank for years because I thought it made me bigger than I needed to be to fight the battles I was in. I sobered up in 1981. I walked into real estate at 40 with three children under the age of four and a goal to pay myself what I was paying the nanny. I gave TED talks and sat on boards and built teams and raised a family.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I started asking: what if I stopped doing what I have always done? What would be on offer on the other side of that?

The answer was more than I expected.

SWAG is for women who are asking that question. Women who are past the years of needing to prove themselves, not quite sure what comes next, and ready to stop pretending that everything is fine. Women who want to be in the company of other women who are honest about that.

It is not a course. It is not a program. It is a community. Women teaching and learning from each other. Giving and taking in the way that women do when they are not performing.

We are on Facebook. Come and find us.

And if you want to stay in touch directly — notes from me, reflections, the occasional invitation to something — drop your email below.

The light is on.